City Hall Mural ID Help

Hey Joey,Tim Moran here. I am the one who posted all of the pictures of the “Magnolia Kids” reunion last September.http://themorans.org/themorans/Magnolia/Magnolia.htmRegarding the restored murals in the City Hall, specifically the one where there is a group of men gathered around a conference table in a meeting.My sisters, Marcia, Sunny, and I are wondering if the man with the gavel at the head of the table might be ouir grandfather Wilfred H Ringer. Wilfred H Ringer was the principal of Gloucester High through much of the 30s.Here are a crop from the mural and a picture of our grandfather.

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Thank you so much for sharing the photo of your grandfather, Wilfred H. Ringer. The Schools were part of applying for some of these commissions and Winter definitely included patron portraits. As Principal he would have been very involved indeed and what an interesting time for the High School!

The City of Gloucester was on the ball applying for the funds from the continually morphing New Deal agencies that were assigning the awards, and the rules. Charles Allen Winter’s mural, City Council in Session, was installed on April 26, 1937, under the auspices of the Public Works of Art Project. It was the 5th one that he completed for Gloucester. He considered this a companion painting for City Government which is on the opposite wall, above the Mayor’s office. Winter was in his 60s when he began these murals, and poured the last decade of his life into his very own Sistine like cycle of paintings.

Winter was born in Cincinnati Ohio, October 26, 1869. Since 1914 he and his wife, artist Alice Beach Winter, spent their summers in Gloucester ,and in 1922 they built a studio at 134 Mt. Pleasant Ave. They did not become permanent residents until 1931, when they gave up their New York studio.

In the background, Winter includes a map with Gloucester’s wards indicated, and the year.
Here are some of the names of the men in this mural—and it is all men—that he depicts in the council meeting: Mayor Weston Friend in the center; Aldermen: Elmer Babson, George Thurston, and Harold Webber at the large table; Roy Parsons, the Gloucester Daily Times City Hall Reporter and James Pringle (author, Gloucester’s historian, the Boston Globe reporter) are seated at the smaller table; standing near the council is City Clerk Allen F. Grant; City Treasurer J. Russell Bohan (holding books); City Solicitor Carlton W. Wonson (white suit); School Superintendent Ernest W. Fellows; Postmaster Gilbert W. O’Neil; current and former presidents of the Chamber of Commerce Richard B. Fisher and Jess R. Kenyon; Lawrence J. Hart, Manager of the Chamber of Commerce; William E. Kerr; and Thomas J. Carol, manager of Gorton-Pew Fisheries…more to come with pictures when Joey returns.

It would be fun to organize a current photograph with the same positions and the people who fill them grouped together beneath this mural.
-Committee for the Arts

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Free GMG Gloucester Sticker

As long as supplies last if any GMG folks want a bumper sticker but can't drop down the dock, just send a self addressed and stamped envelope longer then 7 and a half inches and I'll drop one in the mail for you.

Send the self addressed and stamped envelope to the dock at 95 East Main St Gloucester Ma 01930 care of Joey (put my name in big letters to make sure it gets to me)